Getting out of this relationship

| 1:30 pm EDT March 21, 2021
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I tend to write commentary when something is really weighing on me. Nothing is heavier than the violence perpetrated against seven women and one man on Tuesday, March 16, 2021, by a white male angry at his own uncontrollable sexual proclivity toward the very women he murdered (he was taken into custody unharmed). Georgia sheriff Jay Baker excused this violent criminal, saying, “He was fed up, at the end of his rope…yesterday was a really bad day for him….” One day later, 172 Republicans voted against the Violence Against Women Act.

When will the gun makers, distributors, lobbyists, law enforcement and politicians be held responsible for their irresponsible perpetuation of this deadly insanity? Our prolonged unaddressed outrage is unsustainable. It’s exactly like living in an abusive relationship with no way out.

Georgia lets an unstable person buy guns with no wait time, but women seeking an abortion must wait 24 hours. This is American Sharia Law, institutionalized violence against women. In many countries, women have no voice. However, in the United States we still do and it’s time to fight back. Dianne Feinstein has a long history of fighting for gun safety. Bernie Sanders has a horrible pro-gun record. Women have to lead the reassessment of our relationship with guns, abortion and even climate science. We must combat the radicalization by the right with common sense and re-education.

There’s the French adage that it takes half as long to get out of a relationship as we were in it. It’s not scientific, it’s more about managing expectations. The current mass acceptance of making dangerous firearms accessible to virtually anyone (including domestic terrorists), denying safe abortion to all women, and destroying our planet for our children, was no accident. It happened over decades of brainwashing by Republicans. The NRA influenced the drafting of the Firearm Owners Protection Act passed under Reagan in 1986, and opposed renewal of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, which expired under GW Bush in 2004. Although Roe v Wade was 1973, safe abortion has always been an evangelical Christian battle cry. The fossil fuel industry began their disinformation campaign about Climate Change around 1989.

So if it took 30-40 years of GOP propaganda to get us into this gun violence, anti-women, and anti-climate science nightmare, it will take a while to get ourselves out of it. But time is running out quickly on all of these. At least our fate is currently in the hands of an undeniably compassionate President and, perhaps more important, a woman of color and Asian descent Vice President.